Roselle man dies at Bradley Univ.

September 16, 2003|By Chicago Tribune.

PEORIA — A 22-year-old Bradley University student from Roselle died Sunday after drinking alcohol for several hours to celebrate the end of the Greek system's fall rush, according to the Peoria County coroner's office.

Robert Schmalz, a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, started drinking Saturday with his roommates and continued or started again Sunday morning before attending a ceremony to welcome the new pledge class, authorities said.

A roommate took Schmalz to his off-campus house, where he lived with four friends, and put him to bed at about 2 p.m. Friends checked on him at about 7 p.m. and found that he had stopped breathing, said Peoria County's Chief Deputy Coroner Johnna Ingersoll.

"They were checking to make sure that he was OK," Ingersoll said. Schmalz was pronounced dead at his home at 7:38 p.m. The coroner is awaiting toxicology results before declaring a cause of death. An autopsy showed that he had no medical condition or injuries. Previously, Schmalz had been involved in two alcohol-related incidents, including an arrest last month for driving under the influence in Peoria after he failed a breathalyzer test, according to Secretary of State records.

Schmalz's death comes as Bradley administrators will be in Washington on Tuesday to accept a $5,000 award for having one of the best university alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs nationwide. The Peoria campus has received the award, from the Inter-Association Task Force on Alcohol and Other Substance Abuse issues, for the last five years.

"No school, regardless of the level and quality of alcohol education programs, is immune to these things happening," said Alan Galsky, associate provost for student affairs at Bradley.

Bradley administrators will review the Greek system's "calling out" ceremony, in which new pledges gather in the campus quad to call out the name of the fraternity or sorority they will join, Galsky said. The ceremony, from 10 a.m. to noon, is similar to a campus pep rally.

Galsky described Schmalz as a "very good student" who was to graduate in December with a major in psychology and minor in biology. He planned to attend graduate school.